Monthly Archives: August 2014

What has changed? Absolutely nothing. Oh, there is the little thing of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Can you believe that? Well, you could, if there was any plausible evidence. But, the lies continue …of course they do.

Once you have gone down that path, especially if you are a national leader with a position to uphold, once you have decided who your friends are, on the basis that keeping faith with them may be of some benefit to you, irrespective of how believable their stories are, it is extremely difficult to remove or distance yourself from that situation. No matter how much you would like to do that. This is the situation in which Barak Obama finds himself.

Watching President Obama on the TV news this morning, in his new taupe suit, wearily and without any sort of conviction in his voice or demeanour, explaining the latest Russian involvement in Ukraine, again making entirely unsupported accusations and unsupportable threats of further dire sanctions, it was very clear that he didn’t really want to be there saying the sort of things that he did. He knows, of course, that his position is untenable.

On the other hand, the rabid pronouncements of the deranged Ukrainian Prime Minister who has gone a step too far into believing his own delusions for his mental wellbeing, and the equally rabid threats from the warmongering NATO leadership, intent on finding reason to justify that organisation’s continued existence, were I suppose understandable from their point of view, par for the course, and at least consistent with everything they have said and done so far with respect to this situation. Albeit, based on entirely groundless and unprovable accusations. These desperate pronouncements are being made because things are not going so well for government forces in direct contrast to what is being reported by the pro-western media.

Now, let’s take a look at some credible evidence from a fairly trusted and independent source, the OSCE, as reported here. ‘No Russian troops in Ukraine’: Moscow’s OSCE rep responds to Kiev’s claims. Of course, there are some international fighters endeavouring to protect E. Ukraine from the governments onslaught, and some of them may also be Russian, and some may be soldiers, but that has been admitted, and it does not constitute an invasion. Just as the many hundreds of US mercenaries and covert forces assisting the government troops does not constitute an invasion force.

Even the Ukrainian military are not convinced that what they are being asked to do in killing their own people is justified and many are surrendering at the first opportunity. This is where the Donetsk and Luhansk forces obtain most of their weaponry. Of course it looks like Russian equipment because it is Russian equipment because that is where the Ukraine forces get their arms from, having previously been part of the old USSR.

Let me just clarify something. The black shirted villain about 80% of the way through the video above is not one of the leaders of the new pro-Russian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. He is actually a leader of one of the extreme right fascist groups that are power sharing in the US backed puppet government in Ukraine. An extremely nasty piece of work who is responsible for much of the mayhem in that country and who is getting a bit uptight because the Ukraine military appears to be falling apart. Looks like he wants to march on Kiev and take over the country. His fascist group are descendents of the mid-last century group with the same name that assisted and collaborated with atrocities of the German SS Galicia Division. These are the sort of people that the US & EU are arming and supporting.

I have said it before, but isn’t it a bit rich for the Americans to be calling for Russian interference in Ukraine to cease, not that such interference has been proven, and is in fact unlikely, when the whole Ukraine situation came about through US, especially, and EU meddling in that country’s affairs.

I think that around about now is when the situation in Ukraine begins to take on a more serious note. When one side in a conflict sees that it has lost the upper hand and faces serious prospects of, not defeat, but not winning or overcoming resistence, and starts to make wild calls for external support, that is the time when escalation to a broader conflict becomes increasingly possible. That is something we should all be dreading and trying to avoid at all costs.

I struggled to arrive at a suitable title for this post. Options considered were:

“US Pledges $30 Billion To Build Up Ukraine Military” on top of the billions that it has already invested in setting up and bolstering its own puppet government there. This, on the basis that Poroshenko, President of Ukraine, a bankrupt nation (can’t even pay its gas bill), yesterday vowed to spend exactly that amount for exactly that same purpose. He hasn’t got that sort of money. His country hasn’t got that sort of money. So, it must be coming from his backers, the US.

“US Provides Arms To The Islamic State” , by devious means and sleight of hand, of course. First it gave the weapons to the Iraqi army, knowing full well that they would at the first opportunity, and in only slightly shop-soiled condition, be handed over to the first organised rebel force to show up on Iraq’s doorstep. And since the most radical elements of the Syrian rebel forces, now known as the Islamic State, were the most likely contenders within easy reach (Al Quaeda can be pretty much dismissed as a cohesive force these days), they were the willing participants in the huge US give-away.

“NATO Finds An Enemy …And A Reason To Exist” since it lost both of those causes with the collapse of the Soviet Union several decades ago. NATO has been wandering in the wilderness of purposeless projects for so many years but now, thinking that it has something it can dig its teeth into, is rubbing its hands with glee at the thought and is once again making unfounded, aggressive and belligerent noises against Russia, the core element of its old foe.

“Kiev, Fountain Of All Lies” based on the drivel that continues to pour out from that already discredited source, such as (these are not quotes, just summarisations) ‘Russia is shelling us from both sides of the border’, ‘Russia is amassing troops on our border’, ‘Russia has invaded us (with white trucks?)’, ‘Russia is reinforcing and arming the separatist rebels’. None of which is supportable by anything remotely resembling a fact.

Taking all of these thoughts into account, No Lessons Learned, seems to be the most appropriate title I could come up with.

When is the US going to get tired of making bad foreign policy decisions? Perhaps they don’t view them as bad. Perhaps these acts actually support US foreign policy goals.

When is NATO going to realise that it has no enemy and, as Ron Paul has suggested, actually be disbanded? Preferably before it antagonises someone, eg. Russia, into believing that they (NATO) are actually a real threat to peace and stability.

When is Kiev (current government, that is) going to realise that nobody, at least nobody who gives some thought to their pronouncements, finds them in any way credible? When are they going to pay their gas bill? When are they going to stop trying to annihilate their fellow countrymen in the East?

I can’t do justice to providing comprehensive answers to these questions, but Ilargi as usual makes a very good attempt at giving us some reasonable conclusions on at least some of them in one of his latest posts at The Automatic Earth, here. It is worth reading, in my view. As is his daily round-up and critique of news reportage.

I can always rely on Ilargi to provide me with a stimulating synopsis of the current state of the world, centred loosely around matters financial, in his almost daily blog posts at The Automatic Earth.

There is always a single word, phrase, sentence, or even paragraph in his writings that resonates with me to provide a ‘right on!’ moment of agreement.

We, you and I, now have no say in what occurs in the modern global civilisation of mankind. It doesn’t matter one iota what we think of what takes place in the world. Our opinions, our reactions, our protestations, even our acquiescence, are quite irrelevant to the unfolding of the events of the day. We are merely components of the system, and not very important components at that. We have no choice. We gave that right away some time ago.

I will let Ilargi explain those statements through these quotes:

“…today American policy is made in the headquarters of Big Oil, the military-industrial complex and Wall Street. All of whom stand to profit hugely from chaos and bloodshed in foreign countries, and won’t shy away, never have, from putting American boots on the ground if they feel that will boost their profits. Boots worn by kids who know the army is their only chance at ever getting a real education, but never make it back home.”

“This was inevitable from the moment money was allowed to enter US politics, and it inevitably got stronger over time, until it culminated in the recent Supreme Court decision that there should be no effective limits to how much influence the rich can purchase themselves in Washington.”

This is, of course, not just about America. I would argue that the same thinking can be applied to whatever national government you may choose to think of.

Where is this going? Ilargi continues:

“I wish I could say this is not going anywhere. It is going somewhere though. Just not anywhere you or I should want to go. But we have been pre-empted, what we think or feel no longer matters. The system decides, fully independent from what we as participants in this democracy are legally entitled to, and are supposed to do: guide our nations’ policies towards what we want, not what a handful of corporate interests want.”

“We lost that. We no longer have any influence on what (the government) decides, …or the next… It’s gone.”

I imagine you must have felt, as I have (even though I did not vote), that your government in action is not reflecting what you expected them to do. Not charting the best course for your country. Not making the type of decisions that you feel they should be making. I feel sorry for you if you don’t feel that way.

Of course, recognition of this dis-empowerment of self-determination within the system is actually itself empowering to the enlightened individual, and with that recognition comes a vision that there can be, and is, life, to be had and grasped, outside of that system. The system only holds sway over each one of us for as long as we acquiesce to being part of that system. We can break free, and with each one of us that does that, the system becomes less powerful. If enough of us do that then the system will gradually weaken and eventually collapse.

This is of course external to the fact that the system will at some stage soon, collapse anyway, because it cannot operate outside of the universal laws of physics, no matter how much zombie money it creates and throws at the problems it will face from being subject to operating within a finite world environment.

The system decides…for now…but the system will not always have that capacity. The system will end.

It has been quiet for a while hasn’t it? Ukraine somehow fell off the front page news list. The Kiev Theatre Company and its supporting cast Obama, Abbott & Co, having been laughed off the stage for their last little fairy tale sketch about destroying an invading Russian convoy, haven’t in recent days come up with any new lies.

Russia meanwhile, having got fed up of waiting in the wings quietly while their ethnic neighbours have been ruthlessly pounded and pummelled by the US backed neo-nazis in Ukraine behind the scenes, have now marched onto centre stage with their aid convoy for the beleaguered folk of Eastern Ukraine.

Oh, come on, let’s call it what it is. Not Eastern Ukraine, but DPR, the Donetsk Peoples Republic, because that is what it is, just that it hasn’t so far been recognised as such.

There is also another one around Luhansk. Let’s call that the LPR, the Luhansk Peoples Republic, and this is where the convoy is headed first. Presumably because that is where it is most needed. I expect that these two republics eventually will join together into something like the East Ukraine Peoples Republic or the Little Russia Peoples Republic. The actual name doesn’t matter. The split of Ukraine somewhere down the middle, does. And the recognition of such split, does.

Meanwhile, centre stage, having neatly bypassed any contact with Ukrainian border posts, or totally ignoring them, with warnings to anybody who might think otherwise not to interfere with what they are doing, the Russians have effectively disempowered any attempt to whinge and whine about it from the West. It has already happened. What’s to whinge & whine about, now?

Not that this situational accomplishment has deterred The Bishop (Julie) from feebly bleating out some ridiculous nonsense before checking with her brain whether that would be a wise or sane thing to do. But that is par for the course with our nutty leaders. The same goes for a nameless US representative spouting something similar in this shared article (shared only because it is a convenient link to promote my editorial post, since even the ABC these days can’t report anything sensible but tends to faithfully follow the party line). Whatever. It is all a bit passé now, isn’t it? It already having happened.

If this is a Russian invasion, then it is a very quiet one …so far. Chess Master Vlad. V. Putin still has the game under control and appears to be making all the right moves. But then, the team of hopefuls sitting on the other side of the game-board does not present much in the way of competition, does it?

Like this:

I have been trying to avoid commenting on the Ukraine affair for a while because while the earlier lies and innuendo about Russian involvement emanating from Kiev, Washington, NATO, London, Canberra and elsewhere, have not been admitted to be such by these sources, nor a single one of them proven to be true, but there has been an absence of further such nonsense from the West recently.

I even let the ridiculous notion of Russian soldiers hiding in White humanitarian aid trucks slide by without comment. But this latest farce, reported by Kiev, re-bleated by all of the usual suspects aforementioned, and also corroborated by The Guardian: and the Telegraph, without a single shred of evidence, just cannot be ignored. Journos without cameras? In a War zone? Except on the Russian side of the border? What? Who are they kidding?

Even the silly and vacuous idea that Russia would conduct an invasion fielding just 23 unsupported armoured vehicles is beyond comprehension. Leave alone the concept that Ukraine’s incompetent military is capable of destroying them (without the aid of the many US mercenaries and ‘military advisers’ that are already there) if they did actually exist and did cross the border. Whatever think-tanks came up with such ludicrous proposals are obviously fast running out of ideas and resorting to conjuring up phantoms. Is that really the best that Western propagandists can do? Still, I guess whatever they say doesn’t have to make much sense to convince a population more interested in Angry Birds (or whatever has replaced that) than reality.

None of this augurs well for our future.

I am not saying that Russia will not eventually invade Eastern Ukraine to secure the safety of the Russian speaking population of that country, from the rabid neo-nazi led campaign of destruction being waged against them. I think such action is highly likely and not too far away. I also think such action would be entirely justified.

The only lasting way to settle this is for America to butt out and for Ukraine to be ethnically split into two separate countries aligned along the corresponding regional or district borders. Euro leaners, to the left; Russian speakers, to the right.

Added After Publication:

Now, let me make this clear, I am not a ‘commie’ or a ‘Russian lover’, although I do admit that I have a certain admiration for the considerable political leadership skills displayed by Vladimir Putin as compared to the feeble efforts produced by any section of the Western Block of nations in recent times. I am apolitical on these issues, seeking only to create a perspective of objectivity unclouded by baseless reporting from any source.

I am also fully aware that Mr Putin is no candidate for sainthood, but no less so than those who seek to taint his efforts through misleading propaganda while pursuing their own unscrupulous agendas for political advantage.

I am also very uncomfortable that both my nation of birth and my chosen nation are taking part in this co-conspiracy of such obvious and misguided untruths, directed to harm and hinder the rights of Russia to quietly maintain its own position and influence in global affairs, solidly based on that nation’s size, history and cultural development, and to protect the interests of its ethnic diaspora wherever they exist. Does not the West also demand that same right?

There is room on this planet for all extant cultures to exist in harmony, within the limits of its population carrying capacity. The very last thing we need is a world government based on and dominated by any single political, economic or religion based philosophy. Would you like to live in a United States of the World, a United World Kingdom, a European World Union, a Russian World Federation, a Chinese Socialist World System or even an Islamic or Christian World State? I don’t think so. There is no great sense of ‘Freedom’ in any of those systems, yet remove those political systems and the basic, local, cultural needs of all of the world’s peoples are very similar.

A Short Post, Designed To Get You Thinking

Words are used to convey ideas. While ideas can describe abstractions, practical words like ‘shadow’ and ‘government’ do not describe an abstraction. Someone, somewhere, put these two words together to describe something they had seen.

Oh, poor Australia. Is nasty Russia biting back? There, there. This is not, I’m afraid, something that mummy can fix. Serve us right. Life is not a one way street and if you want to play with the big boys you have to have a big game to bring. And that is something that little Australia just does not have.

Our stupid government should have kept its mouth shut instead of groundlessly blaming Russia for MH17. Something which, along with our media and even the ABC which I find incredulous, it blindly continues to do. We fell for (well the govt and media did, as well as a fair proportion of the uninformed population I suspect) the outright lies and deception of the US leadership along with the gutless nobodies who lead the EU and their jointly owned attack dog, NATO. Even when it has been proven that the missile, if there was one (and that does not altogether fit the evidence on the ground), could physically only have come from Ukrainian military held territory. See: Some Facts On Flight MH17. Somehow, this information needs to get to the media.

So, Australia has, as a nation, lost some $400 million worth of food exports over the next year as a result of Russian sanctions aimed at those nations who jumped on the US/EU bandwagon. Meanwhile New Zealand (who did not indulge in the same speculative rhetoric) will be cashing in by selling more cheese to Russia, and Brazil will be able to send them more beef. As Mr Putin has said, this will also be an opportunity for Russian farmers to increase their own farming produce output to fill any shortfall in imports. A very sound policy and something that perhaps they should have been doing all along.

Now our stupidly fearless leaders, including The Short’un (ALP Bill, that is), taken aback by the Russian move, have the audacity to say ‘who are the Russians to inflict sanctions on us?’ and ‘We’ll get them back through the WTO’. What blind fools they are.

Meanwhile again, Europe has nothing to lose, well almost literally next to nothing, from moving closer to pushing Russia into yet another European conflict in order to cover up their own hopeless economic situation.

I just read this morning this article by Ilargi of The Automatic Earth and I must share here a quote from that piece which I see as being the most concise and accurate version of the truth of what happened in Ukraine over the last few months that I have so far seen.

“…let’s see what, again, do we know for sure so far, what we can prove? Here’s what:

The EU and US instigated, financed and supported the Maidan movement, installed their very own handpicked government in Kiev, established an army aimed at eradicating all signs of discontent among Russian speaking Ukrainians in east Ukraine, with crucial parts played by CIA, Blackwater and various other mercenaries, blamed Putin for the downing of a plane without providing any evidence whatsoever of his involvement, announced a second series of economic sanctions on Russia, and then claim Russia has no reasons at all to announce its own set of counter sanctions.

It would be funny if it weren’t so out there.”

Ilargi appears to like long sentences just as much as I do.

This is virtually the same expression of ideas as I have been saying recently, except that I was only following developments with a mild curiosity up until the MH17 incident when I began to see the injustice and deceit being promoted by the West and indeed championed by Australian leaders and media.

It is now clear to me that the ‘EU and US instigated, financed and supported’ Maidan protest movement is the self-same force, now backed by the Ukrainian military (whose ministerial control they share with the new government), that is now seeking to destroy and eradicate the ethnic Russian population in the East. Once you have seen that connection, and it has fully registered with you, then everything else falls neatly into place. The instigators, the backers, the objectives, and the motives, are revealed.

The Russian speaking separatists are not the murdering criminals being portrayed by Western media. They are an ethnic minority fighting for their lives and homes against the real murdering criminals. President Putin would be entirely justified in sending his military might to defend these peoples rights. Maybe he should have done that a long time ago but he is a master strategist so I expect he will play his hand at just the right time. Since Obama shows all the signs of being afraid of Putin, nothing much would happen to stop such action, except some EU nations might get a bit uppity and need to be put in their place.

No nation has ever successfully pitted itself against Russian might. Germany should remember that they are still 2-0 down on that score from the previous century. France may need to think back to what occurred just over two centuries ago. Australia, as a player remote from and irrelevant to such a stoush, should just keep schtumm.

~~~(:)~~~

Afterword: I seem to be writing quite a lot about events centered in a little known and far off place situated at a critical point between two or perhaps three different cultural groupings on the world’s largest contiguous land mass. A place that I may have flown over once or twice, but to which I have never visited.

My reasons for dwelling on this area are that I feel that it may hold the key to momentous changes to the lives of all of us over the coming months or years.

Could it be that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of globalisation? Where nations begin to look internally to their own stability and sustainability (ugh! hate that word).

Could it be that we are witnessing the initial phases of the final war to end all possibility of future wars?

Could it be that we are witnessing the point in history when nations start to turn to cooperation rather than confrontation?

Could this year, 2014, be the year that everything changes, for better or worse?

I have made some fairly pointed statements, both here and on my Facebook page, in the last month or so about the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 affair but I haven’t said much about this over the last few days.

That doesn’t mean that my previously stated views have changed in any way. I have just been waiting for those sources who were quick off the mark ( Obama, Abbott & Co., any of the EU leaders, etc.) to pile blame for the tragedy on Russia and/or the Russian speaking Ukrainian separatists in the East of that country, to produce any shred of evidence to support their claims.

The silence has been deafening. The lies and innuendo have continued of course, quietly, just to keep the pretense going in order to support the imposition of sanctions on Russia for which there is no justifiable basis. There are other reasons for the sanctions, many of which I have spoken of earlier.

There have been developments though, which entirely back up my assertions that it was the Ukrainian government (or some of their wild-card supporters, perhaps even US supplied mercenaries or ‘military advisers’). I am speaking of this report: Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts: White House vs. Intelligence Community? for example which was re-posted yesterday on the website of Republican and US ex-Congressman Ron Paul. The report pits the research of some prominent US Intelligence Analysts against the Obama reported position and basically says the same things I have been saying all along.

I will wait for denials but I doubt there will be any carrying any credence.

Further, Ron Paul is also personally saying ‘Why Won’t Obama Just Leave Ukraine Alone?’. You can find the full text of this piece also on the Ron Paul Institute website if you don’t trust the reporting from Russia Today. I personally find this to be quite a useful alternate information source. OK, I know, Ron Paul would say things like he does in that article wouldn’t he, being on the other side of politics to the current White House incumbent? But some things can be thought of as transcending opposing political ideologies.

My view remains, fortified by this new information, that the innocents on MH17 died needlessly for Western greed for resources and continued expansionism of US influence.

Added after publication:

Still confused about who shot down MH17? Here’s a very interesting read: What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?. Maybe, just maybe, I can withdraw my conjecture about direct intervention by CIA or other US ‘advisers’ in this despicable act, though their presence and influence is indubitably real.

It becomes clearer that the US does have satellite evidence of what occurred but it makes sense as to why this has not been publicised. The reason is because it fingers the Ukrainian military, the forces controlled by the US installed puppet government in May. More specifically by government ministries that through power sharing are headed by right wing militias known to have collaborated with the Nazi SS in WW2 and whose stated aim is to annihilate the Russian ethnic population of Eastern Ukraine.

Now that does make sense and also accounts for the renewed and frenetic military offensive being conducted by Ukraine government forces to impede and prevent the work of international investigators from proceeding and to destroy the crash site.

Like this:

Once again I am posting something here which is pretty much a copy of a Facebook post I just made. It seems that I am tending to use Facebook as something of a workbench. Oh well, if that is the way forward, who am I to fight it.

Does life ever seem like riding on a fairground roundabout? You are gaily (in the true etymological sense) riding your dancing horse, going up and down, round and round, mesmerised by the loud fairground music dulling your senses, staring at the rear end of the horse in front. You have a moment, and you tear your gaze away from the horses backside, looking around at the passing scene. “This looks familiar” you say. “I’m sure we have seen and done this before”. A moment later, there it is again, and again, and again, until the end of the ride. And then the music stops.

Why am I talking about roundabouts and dancing horses? Life isn’t a roundabout. True, it’s not. But civilisation is. Modern life, as part of society, is. We have all at some stage stepped on to that roundabout. Many of us are happy being on the merry-go-round and may have even forgotten that this is where we are.

The trick is, to dismount, get off, before the music stops. Then to sit down for safety for a while, until the dizzyness that follows such action has passed and is replaced by a much clearer view..

Let me try to explain why the modern world, the western developed peoples anyway, are still riding the roundabout of civilisation, enjoying the distraction, and with nary (yes, that is a word) a thought that maybe they should get off the damn thing.

The (recently new) Australian Federal Government brought down its first annual budget in May of this year. Where are we now? Early August. About three months later, and despite their soundly thrashing the opposition at the last election, they still have very little of their policies passed into legislation. We have our two tier parliamentary system, specifically designed to ensure that nothing much changes in any hurry, to thank for that.

Even so, the government continues to find it very difficult to sell its budgetary measures on either the political or public market. In fact there is what appears to be a continual shedding or chipping away of some of the more controversial aspects of the beast.

This chipping away at the budget measures is kind of like the tiles falling off the space shuttle on take-off and re-entry, don’t you think? Remember the space shuttle? Emblem of a bygone era where debt, resource depletion and collapsing markets were not subjects that might generally be raised for polite discussion. Just a few lost tiles may have a significantly more serious impact on the operation of the whole structure than their size and weight may indicate.

Problem is, it’s not the government’s policy on this that is the issue, not that I am in any way a supporter of govt policy, it’s more to do with too many sick people around, dipping their fingers into the pie. I can say that, as someone who has a health condition but chooses to not dip my feet into the murky waters of the health system to treat it. And also someone of a certain age that is known to be the section of society which generally has the need to involve itself with increasing regularity in health centric matters.

Why are there too many sick people around? Well, that is also to do with government policy of supporting big business like the health, pharmaceutical, chemical and agricultural industries who see the health situation (which includes food production) as a means to make huge profits by making and keeping folk sick while pretending to be a beneficial force in society. All in the name of economic growth and profit.

The economy actually doesn’t need a whole lot of healthy people (or highly educated people either, as a matter of fact, which is why we have the education system we have). They only need to have just enough life in them (and be dumb enough) to perform the mindless tasks they are expected to perform to keep earning just enough to allow them to keep spending those earnings on, among other things, health services and the kind of food that is largely responsible for keeping them in this semi-comatose state so that they don’t realise that they are being screwed and can keep plodding along, spending, spending until retirement and beyond, where they will be kept semi-alive for as long as possible to become a burden on succeeding generations and perhaps the biggest contributors to the continuance of the growth paradigm by ensuring the ongoing need for a huge health and pharmaceutical industry.

If there weren’t so many drug companies, chemical companies, hospitals, health research institutes, fitness centres, health clinics/centres, supermarkets, and other businesses meddling with our food, groundwater and other environmental necessities, around, there would be nowhere near the huge numbers of sick people either.

Of course, that would also mean the demise of modern civilisation because as soon as one of the dancing horses on the fairground roundabout that is modern society comes loose and falls off, the whole thing will go out of balance and self-destruct.

We couldn’t let that happen, could we?

Well, maybe we won’t be given the choice.

Does that put the relevance or irrelevance of budgetary measures into a little clearer perspective?

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You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.
Vernon Howard

When we think about climate change (if we think about it at all), we envision rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, freakish storms, hellish wildfires, and rising sea levels. Among other things, this will result in damaged infrastructure and diminished food supplies. These are, of course, manifestations of warming in the physical world, not the social world we all inhabit and rely on for so many aspects of our daily well-being and survival. The purely physical effects of climate change will, no doubt, prove catastrophic. But the social effects including, somewhere down the line, food riots, mass starvation, state collapse, mass migrations, and conflicts of every sort, up to and including full-scale war, could prove even more disruptive and deadly.
Michael T. Klare - The Hunger Wars in Our Future

Remember that fact and faith are mutually exclusive things. If you have facts you have proof, therefore you don't need faith. Conversely, with no facts there is no proof and faith is needed to believe something. But faith is more emotion than logic, so almost anything can be justified. And that's where the Church gets its power.
Martin I Henry - The Anunnaki (The Chronicles of the Guardians)

...from nature’s perspective, we’re simply one more species that overshot the carrying capacity of its environment and is about to pay the routine price...
John Michael Greer - The Falling Years: An Inhumanist Vision

It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of the mind and self. They become part of you while changing you. Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.
Ben Okri

Money is not what it used to be and not what it seems.
JH Kunstler http://kunstler.com/blog/2013/04/are-you-going-to-entropy-faire.html

Hope and history are sisters: one looks forward and one looks back, and they make the world spacious enough to move through freely. Obliviousness to the past and to the mutability of all things imprisons you in a shrunken present.
Rebecca Solnit
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175701/tomgram%3A_rebecca_solnit%2C_what_comes_after_hope/

To claim that there are many gods, a few gods, only one god, or no gods at all is to insist on something about which human beings have no independently verifiable source of information whatsoever.
John Michael Greer
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/a-question-of-values.html

Knowing many stories is wisdom.
Knowing no stories is ignorance.
Knowing only one story is death.
John Michael Greer
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.au/2006/05/knowing-only-one-story.html

We should live as if we were in public view, and think, too, as if someone could peer into the inmost recesses of our hearts. The Blight which assails us is not in the localities we inhabit but in ourselves. We are more wicked together than separately. If you are ever forced to be in a crowd, then most of all you should withdraw into yourself. Never trust another to do your thinking. Even a maston.
Gideon Penman of Muirwood Abbey - from The Blight of Muirwood (Legends of Muirwood Book 2) by Jeff Wheeler.